some potential / no delivery

Rating: 3/10 (18 September 2007)

Daryl Zanuck took this on as a personal project, but earnestness cannot overcome run-of the mill conception & direction. The merit of this film is to tell the story of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. It's not to create art, or even to elicit sentiment. So to be as factual as possible, (or at least market it as such) they filmed on actual locations which are still recognizable today. A puzzling disconnect occurs in the production: John Wayne is there to 'John Wayne' things up (he plays another hard-on), trying to make it a personal story but if ever there was as story about group sacrifice, D-Day is it. This narrative problem is never successfully addressed. As with all war films the goals are so poorly explained that you don't care if the allies derail a train, or save a bridge; because although characters have talked (and talked and talked) for an hour before things get going, you still don't understand what specific goal has been achieved. It's all poorly explained.
My french guide through Normandy took us through his hometown 'Ouisterham' in the film, whose distinct cliff-walled harbor is featured in the movie. This sequence begins with a long aerial tracking shot that comes down the harbor. It's one of the best sequences. It occurs nowhere near the beach. When we revert back to the beach, some time later to resume the Mitchum/Albert storyline, it actually feels out of order.
The on-location filming in undermined by some of the worst rear-screen insertions I've ever seen. The actors actually cast shadows on the rearscreen. At one point about nine actors are squeezed onto a barely passable set of an aircraft carier bridge, with the sea faked in behind them. Red Buttons is here playing the same annoying sappy twerp he always does. Richard Beymer is trying to give an electrifying modern performance but he has nothing to do.
The English army is constantly depicted as dorks with silly priorities. English culture used to interest me. Now I can't imagine why; it doesn't stimulate an ounce of interest.
The movie never wavers from the battle narrative. This is most unfortunate as we watch maybe twenty early scenes establish, re-establish and belabor the same points. We don't get a scene of the army greeted as liberators, so as far as prestige pix go it's pretty chilly.
Sean Connery shows up and spews some indecipherable lines. Three single-named stars (Arletty, Fabian, somebody else) are in the movie along with anyone who passed through Hollywood in 1956 in possession of a penis (Paul Anka, Ricard Beymer, Jeff Hunter, Sal Mineo, Robert Mitchum, Eddie Albert, John Wayne, Richard Burton, Peter Lawford, Henry Fonda, Edmund O'Brien, George Segal, rod Steiger, Tom Tryon, Robert Wagner) & Roddy MacDowell (whom I would argue could not possibly have had a penis).
Graphic deisgn. I really can't understand why graphic design has achieved the reputation it has. Here "The Longest Day" is spelled out with long letters, literalizing the stupidest aspect a weak-minded designer could muster.
The end theme doesn't help the tone. It's a peppy whistling march that gives way to an asinine chorus, as if to say don't think about the gravitas of this heavy topic, just go out and think pretty thoughts.